


Anne

by 14CombatGeishas



Series: You Were Probably Happier Yesterday [5]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Doug deserves some happiness, Fluff, Gen, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2019-01-01 07:06:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12151296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/14CombatGeishas/pseuds/14CombatGeishas
Summary: After nine months of waiting, Anne is finally born.  Doug Eiffel's thoughts the first time he holds his daughter.Plus, the beginning of "Raiders," Anne's first confused pop-culture reference, the Rafiki thing, and Stepford baby books.





	Anne

It had been a very long night.  Twelve hours ago Doug would have sworn there would never be a more difficult night than the second night he was clean.  But even the paranoia and discomfort of his own brain rebelling against him wasn’t as nerve-wracking as Kate’s labor.  He spent twelve hours without leaving her side, holding her hand, far more anxious than the woman actively pushing a seven pound human being out of her body.  But in the end everything went smoothly.  Anne Garcia was born into the world.  Doug now sat back against the radiator, feeling exhausted but almost giddy.  Behind him, out the narrow window, Houston’s skyline glittered in the muggy city dawn.  

“Do you want to hold her?” the nurse asked Doug. She was a small middle-aged black woman with a clean white smile and clean blue scrubs. In her arms she held the little bundle of fuzzy pink blankets that contained Anne.  Part of him couldn’t believe this day had actually come.  After nine months of waiting, of fear, of joy, of anxiety, and of anticipation.  Nine months treading life, managing, somehow, to keep his head above water, battered around by the waves. Nine months of Protracted Alcohol Withdrawal Syndrome, unending shivers and shakes and aches and sweats and tears, a fog over his brain that wouldn’t lift, shared morning sickness with Kate.  Nine months of visits to IKEA and Baby Gap, overtime to pay for the visits to IKEA and Baby Gap. Baby proofing his hellhole apartment and Kate’s slightly less terrible one, appointments at the Planned Parenthood where the staff knew his and Kate’s names and gave them the picture of the sonogram he proudly kept on his desk.  After all of that, Anne was here.  And Doug had never seen anything quite so beautiful.  He had gotten excited about being a dad.  As excited as he was terrified.  But he hadn’t known what to expect when the day finally came.  He never thought it would feel like this.  He didn’t know he _could_ feel like this.

“Can I?” he asked, looking from Anne’s little face, to the nurse, to Kate who was falling asleep on the hospital bed.  His heart thumped. Everything felt more intense, including both his excitement and his fear.  What if she cried?  What if he dropped her?  What if he was as bad at being a dad as he was at everything else?  

“Of course,” the nurse said.

Kate nodded groggily, “don’t be stupid, Doug.”

Nervously, Doug held out his arms for his daughter.  He tried to arrange them the way he’d seen in those baby books with the ridiculously pastel-colored illustrations of serenely smiling white people. They’d always been so distractingly Stepford that that was all he ever really took away from them.  

“Careful,” the nurse said as she helped Doug hold his daughter for the first time.   

“I feel like I’m taking the gold idol in the beginning of Raiders.  Should I give you a bag of sand?” he asked.  A glance at the nurse’s face revealed she either didn’t get or didn’t appreciate the reference.

“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Eiffel, just mind her head.”  

“…Like this?”

“That’s it,” said the nurse in her encouraging, friendly voice.

He looked down at the baby in his arms.  Her tiny face.  Her tiny fingers.  Her fuzz of dark hair.  Her shining dark eyes.  She was beautiful.  This was real.  This was happening.  This was Anne, his daughter.  After nine months she was really here in his arms.  For a moment Doug’s heart skipped.  He felt himself smiling.

It made everything worth it.  He forgot the agony of getting (and being) sober, the emotional aches, the physical withdrawal, the sleepless nights and unending days.  He forgot the angst he and Kate caused each other, because how could anything that created this little girl be bad?  Less Sid and Nancy, more Mike and Carol Brady for once.  His entire life was worth it.  For the first time he didn’t feel like a waste of DNA.  For the first time he didn’t think the world wouldn’t care if he was never born. Every single second of it was leading up to this.  To Anne.  And that made it all worth it.  

Doug Eiffel was happy.  Really, truly happy.  He realized with a start this was the happiest he had ever been in his life.  This single moment with his daughter in his arms.  He didn’t think anything could make him happier.  He understood for the first time what happiness really was.  And it was his little girl.  

He saw a lifetime ahead of him and her, her first audio-recorder, her first Christmas, her first Halloween, her first day at school, her first time watching _Star Wars_ , her first bike, her first confused pop-culture reference, forgetting her first locker combination and calling him for bolt-cutters, her first day of college (neither Kate nor Doug ever went to _real_ college, but Anne would), moving her into her first crappy apartment probably on the fifth floor of a building without an elevator, her first job, and maybe one day the day when he would hold _her_ first kid.  Anne wouldn’t be like him.  She would be smarter than he was, better than he was, more successful.  They had so much time together.  And Doug looked forward to every single moment of it.  The baby in his arms made a quiet sucking sound.

“Hey there,” he whispered to her, “Hi, Anne.  I can’t believe you’re really here.  I bet you’re thinking ‘who is this weird giant?  What’s going on?  I’m not even an hour old – what is life?’ Don’t worry, I’m your dad.  I’m your dad and I love you. I don’t know what’s going on or what life is either, but maybe we can figure it out together.  Until then we can watch the Muppets.  How’s that sound?  That sound good?”

Anne made another sound, a quiet little gurgle that Doug took as an affirmative.  

“Yeah I think so too.  You’ll love Kermit.”  She was so fragile in his arms.  It made him feel extremely protective, like he could and would do anything to keep her safe.  She squirmed a little and one of her little brown hands came free from the bundle.  She clutched vaguely at the air and Doug offered her his finger.  She took it, wrapping all of her digits around one of his.  “God, you’re so small…”  Doug had obviously seen babies before, but he never really noticed them, at least not how he found himself noticing things about Anne.  She was the smallest person he had ever seen.  Her hand was the same as anyone else’s, same fingers, same knuckles, same nails, only in miniature.  Small, soft, fragile – he could say that about any part of her. “Look at your teeny tiny hands and your teeny tiny fingers!” He realized his voice had gotten a little shrill when Anne let out a sound that almost threatened to turn into crying.  Doug cooed and rocked her, “I’m sorry, it’s okay, it’s okay.”  It seemed to soothe her.  Doug felt proud.  He’d done that.  He had kept her calm.  “Don’t worry, I got you…I’ve always got you, I promise.”

From the bed Kate let out a sleepy laugh, rolling over onto her side to better watch Doug and their daughter.

“What’s so funny?” Doug asked, smiling but not looking up at Kate. He couldn’t look away from Anne.

“I really thought you were gonna try to do the Rafiki thing from the beginning of The Lion King.”

Now Doug actually chuckled, “Not gonna lie, I thought about it.” But he decided that it would be best to wait until she could support her own head.  There was a long period of quiet.  For once in his life Doug had nothing else to say.  He just held Anne, living in this perfect moment.  

He wanted to stay there forever.  They were safe here in a fragile little bubble of contentment.  Deep down that little dark voice that could never just let Doug be happy reminded him that this would not last forever.  Time would keep moving forward.  The world would catch up to them.  Grim reality would seize this fragile little scene and shatter it like a snow globe dropped from a shelf.  The pieces would break apart, get swept up, and thrown away. The real world was always out there waiting.  The tide would always come in and wash this all away, pull all three of them under it.  

But for now things were right.  Things were good.   He kissed his daughter’s forehead gently and breathed, “Welcome to the world, Anne.  It sucks, but I’ll make sure you don’t realize that until you’re at least fourteen.”

 


End file.
